Can This Marriage Be Saved

20 Can This Marriage Be Saved?

fashion trends, she treated herself to a new wardrobe. Having
learned to choose smarter clothes in more becoming colors, she
elicited a compliment from Dick on a dress that was not bright
green.

Next she joined the League of Women Voters. Andrea did not
turn into a sparkling conversationalist overnight, but she did be-
come interested in the issues of the day. Neither she nor Dick was
politically inclined and neither had ever voted. A couple of months
after joining the League, Andrea surprised her family by besting
Dick in a dinner-table argument. She convinced him it was his civic
duty to register and go to the polls.

Shortly after this, Dick discovered that painting was fun for him,
and with the discovery he burst through the walls of work and self-
absorption that had so long imprisoned him. One of Andrea's
League friends invited the couple to drop in on a class of amateur
artists who hired a professional teacher. Andrea was mildly inter-
ested in the class. Dick was fascinated. Three hours and one
painting later, the first painting of Dick's life, he invited the teacher
back home with them for dinner.

The illnesses which made Dick and his family wretched and
sadly interfered with his profession are almost a thing of the past.
Now if he feels pressures building, he picks up his brushes and goes
out painting. Sometimes Andrea accompanies him; sometimes she
busies herself with her own concerns. Sometimes she praises the
picture he brings home; sometimes she frankly states why she does
not like it. Paradoxically, as Andrea has pulled away from Dick
she feels that she has grown closer to him. Both he and she have
grown within themselves. They have more to offer to each other
and to their children.

Hoyt and Jan Summers were much younger than the Weymers
when they came to the Institute for counseling; Hoyt was twenty-
five, Jan twenty-three. Jan came sulkily and unwillingly. She had